Zenmaster
Ch'ing-yüan Wei-hsin's sharing with
Werner's
which starts this essay, delivers one of my favorite (if not one of the
tersest) descriptions of a
transformed
life, a life returned to simplicity and elegance after taking
responsibility for
self-imposed
meaning-making, judgement, assessment, and righteousness.

Each time I read Ch'ing-yüan Wei-hsin's account, I get more from
it. For starters, a life (my life, your life) never really comes full
circle, does it? At best a life comes full spiral given we
can never, with the passing of time, get back to the exact place where
we started. We're always moving, willingly or not, ahead.
Ch'ing-yüan Wei‑hsin's back to the same point of innocence
in the way he regards
mountains
and
waters
now, which makes it a full circle. But he's no longer a child. He's a
Zenmaster
now. He's ahead. So it's a full spiral rather than a full circle.

His sharing calls forth
beginner's
mind.
Although he's no longer a child, his perceptions are child-like.
Because they're childlike, they're powerful. They're
masterful.

I take exception with authors and orators who've somehow cast
meaning-making, judgement, assessment, and righteousness in a negative,
"bad" light. Meaning‑making, judgement, assessment, and
righteousness are neither negative nor bad. But they are learned. I
don't know
why
we learn them. We just learn them. And learning them is an essential
component of what it is to be human. The trouble is we then forget
they're merely learned, and they're not intrinsic to anything.
The world
didn't come with meaning, judgement, assessment, and righteousness like
your new car came with an owner's manual.

Then (is it a matter of grace? is it a matter of
intention?
is it a matter of sheer blind luck? of good fortune?)
when we discover our responsibility for assigning meaning,
judgement, assessment, and righteousness, and when we distinguish
assigning meaning, judgement, assessment, and righteousness, that's the
onset of
mastery.

Listen:
things don't mean anything. It's we who assign meaning. There's no
absolute judgement. It's we who cast judgement. We can't
not make meaning. We're meaning-making
machines.
We can't not be judgemental. We're judgement-casting
machines.
We can, however, own the meaning we assign. We can, however,
be responsible for the judgement we cast. No omens carry any
meaning - other than the meaning we assign. The only thing a black cat
crossing your path means, is a black cat is crossing your path.
Honest! That's all it means.

When I was a child, I saw things simply - as simply as any child sees
things.
Mountains
were
mountains.
Waters
were
waters.
Then as I grew up, there were rewards, there were goodies to be
gotten for making meaning, for adding meaning, for discussing
meaning. And those rewards were pretty cool, as I recall: esteem, love,
being appreciated, good grades. So I continued making meaning.
Man! I learned to make meaning. I got good at
making meaning.

Now there's
nothing wrong
with making meaning. But what I lost along the way was remembering it
was I who made up the meaning in the first place. What got set in place
instead was "Things have meaning" and my role as a
smart ass was to report on their meaning as cleverly as I
could. Pretty soon I had advanced to looking for the meaning of
Life itself
- along with most of my erudite peers. Of course we didn't find it
(there is none) yet we were convinced it all meant
something, and we would find whatever it all meant someday. My
responsibility, my authorship in the matter of
meaning-making was completely overshadowed, at least for the next
decade
or so.
Mountains
had stopped being
mountains:
mountainsmeant something.
Waters
had stopped being
waters:
waters
meant something.

It was the dawn of the age of meaning. It was the start of the age of
reason. In this age, I thought meaning was things'
meaning. I thought it was their meaning. I'd forgotten it
was my meaning. In this age, I thought things happened
for a reason. I'd forgotten it was I who assigned whatever I
considered to be the most likely explanation as a reason,
as
cause in the matter.
And I'd forgotten to differentiate between them ... forgotten to
differentiate between them, that is until I met
Werner,
at which point differentiating between them was no longer avoidable.

Discovering, for the first time, my role in making up all the meaning
in my life, was awkward - to say the least. No, it was worse than that.
It was when I first entered into this
conversation
with
Werner,
it was waaay more than just awkard. Even though in my gut
I already knew it was true, I wanted to be anywhere else on
Earth
other than in that place having that
conversation
with that man at that time. It was arduous. And it continued being
arduous until it wasn't arduous anymore.

<aside>

It was
Jesus Christ
who said "Know the truth, and the truth will set you free.".

But it was the glorious Gloria Steinem who grabbed my attention and
perfectly encapsulated my experience by saying "The truth will set
you free, but first it will piss you off.".

Boy! Was she ever right ...

<un-aside>

Meeting
Werner
was the occasion when everything Ch'ing-yüan Wei-hsin had been
saying all those years, became (with an excited "A-Ha!")
clear, commonplace, obvious,
self-evident.